BART worker says he gave away tickets ‘to help the kid’

A BART worker says he could lose his job for giving away $300 worth of tickets against the rules.

But, he says, it was for a good cause: They went to a kid who was struggling to afford his commute to school.

That’s the situation that BART station agent Jim Stanek, who has worked for the transit system for seven years, says he’ll defend at a personnel hearing Friday. He says he’s been told that he may be forced to retire early, but says, “The penalty does not, to me, seem to be fitting the crime.”

Stanek, a 65-year-old Novato resident, told Insider he got involved because he is longtime friends with the grandfather of a teenage boy whose father died last year.

Lonnie Gordon, who lives in Oakley with his wife, said the pair stepped in to care for the 16-year-old. But he soon lost interest in learning and started getting suspended from classes in Hercules, where he was attending public school.

So Gordon and his wife sent the boy to Flex Academy in San Francisco, where, Gordon says, he is a junior and doing much better in class.

The problem: The teen commutes from the Pittsburg/Bay Point BART Station to San Francisco, which costs about $11 for a round-trip ticket. That adds up to about $200 a month, which Gordon and his wife, who are respectively a retired salesman and nurse, had trouble affording.

“It’s a real long commute, it’s a lot of trouble, but if it can keep him on the right track, that’s where I want him to go to school,” Gordon said.

When Stanek heard about their dilemma, he thought he could help. In the Daly City booth where he works, there was $300 worth of paid, unused tickets that commuters left behind. Stanek says those tickets are usually thrown away.

Two weeks ago, Stanek said he gave them to the teen — knowing it was against the rules. Later, when a station agent asked the teen about the bundle of tickets, he explained where he got them.

“I’m not saying I’m unblemished here. I made a mistake. I screwed up,” Stanek said. “I gave tickets to the boy for reasons not for profit — for benevolence, to help the kid.”

Jim Allison, a BART spokesman, confirmed Stanek works for BART, but wouldn’t discuss the specifics of the situation because it is a personnel matter.

But he said that “tickets are cash to us,” adding, “If you break the rules for whatever good reason, you’re liable to meet some sort of discipline.”